


Each and Every Word

by quantumoddity



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Eventual Smut, F/M, Forgiveness, Grief/Mourning, Mental Health Issues, Reconciliation, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 21:45:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7730905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hamiltons move uptown.</p>
<p>Okay so, I've taken a lot of liberties with history for this, I'd say it follows the plot of the musical more closely than anything, with Alexander and Eliza reconciling after the death of Philip and how that leads to their last child, Little Phil. It's a modern AU too, seeing as thats apparently all I can write! Hope you enjoy and forgive my historical inaccuracies, all comments are appreciated!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Each and Every Word

Alexander Hamilton had naïvely thought he knew what fear was, what pain was. He’d nearly died twice, he’d seen combat and war and poverty at an age where most children wouldn’t have even heard those words before. But then he’d fallen in love. He’d had children of his own. And he made the horrifying realisation that fear for your own life was nothing, was meaningless, compared to fear for the lives of the people you loved.

 

He hated hospitals. He’d always hated them. And now he had another reason.

He barely registered anything as he sprinted through the stark white corridors, there was only one phrase beating a horrible tattoo in his brain, pulsing through his vein like poison.

_Your son, he’s been shot. He’s been shot. He’s been shot. He’s been shot._

His phone had slipped through his fingers and clattered against the carpet after the harried voice of the emergency surgeon had said that phrase. He’d dropped everything and run all the way here from the Treasury building, the voices of everyone who called after him, asked him where he was going, what he was doing blurring into a high, keening ringing in his ears. And now he was throwing himself up the stairs of the hospital towards the ICU and still no one had stopped him to tell him this was all some sick joke. He was starting to panic.

_Please. Please, not my son. Not my Phillip._

A strong hand fell on his shoulder, forcing him to a halt, “Mr Hamilton? Can I-“

“Is he alive?” Alex demanded, having to force the words out of his mouth, spit them, almost too scared to ask, “Is my son alive?”

There was a hesitation of only a heartbeat in the doctor’s affirmative reply but it was enough to stop Alex’s world in its tracks. He turned to rush through the door, the doctor having to practically tackle him to stop him.

“Mr Hamilton, please, you need to know, his wound is very serious, and he’s lost an awful lot of blood. I need to be honest with you about his chances-“

Alex felt bile rise in his throat. _No, no please._ This time the doctor didn’t try to stop him.

 The sight of his eldest son lying prone on the hospital bed almost brought Alexander to his knees. He looked so…fragile. His chest hardly seemed to be moving, his long fingers were clenched in tight, white knuckled fists and there was a grim twist to his face that looked so out of place on Phillip’s gentle features. Oh God, he was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing that morning as he’d begrudgingly allowed his father to hug him goodbye except there was a dark stain on the front of his shirt that Alex couldn’t bear to look at.

“Phillip,” he moaned, brokenly, as he collapsed in the chair by his son’s pale face. He reached out a trembling hand to gently rest on those wild, dark corkscrew curls, Hamilton curls, which had made his father weep when he’d first seen them. Now they were limp and damp.

Phillip took a shallow, painful breath, his eyes half opening. There was so much pain and fear in them, Alex’s resolve to stay strong snapped in an instant and he just burst into desperate tears, “Phillip…”

“Pa…” his son’s voice was flat and barely audible, the wheeze of a broken instrument.

“Don’t, Phillip, please, shhh,” Alex murmured, though part of him clung to his son’s weak voice like it was the most precious sound in the world.

“Pa…I…I did exactly…what you s-said…I held…m-my head up…high.”

Alex gave a low moan of pain. _No, no, no, I didn’t mean this, I never wanted this, no._

When his eldest son had come to that morning, asking for help with another boy who he’d been fighting with, Alexander hadn’t even hesitated, hadn’t even thought to ask what it was about. Ever since he’d…done what he’d done, his elder children had been so cold with him, refusing to speak with him; Phillip had even openly confronted him after he’d published that fucking thing. It had broken what was left of him to see his precious son so brutally angry with him and to have Phillip come to him asking for advice, like nothing had changed…he hadn’t expected _this_. _Please not my son. Not my Phillip. Please. This can’t be my fault, too._

“I’m here Phillip, I’ve got you. Just save your strength,” Alex’s voice trembled uncontrollably, his words failing him for the first time in his life, “Just stay alive for me, please.”

“Pop…I-I…where’s…where…”

Alexander had a feeling he knew what his son was trying to say but his question was promptly answered by the sound of the door opening and a horrified gasp. Eliza.

Even now, even months after the whole Reynolds incident, Alexander still had a brief moment where he forgot everything and still felt the joy at seeing his wife he’d used to feel, before his guilt and shame drowned it. She stood in the doorway, looking pale and drawn, her face frozen in terror. With a whimper, she flew to her son’s bedside, the opposite side to Alex, not even glancing at her estranged husband. He’d never seen her this scared, his emotions reflected on her face.

“Is he breathing? Is he going to be okay? Oh God, oh God, who did this? Who the _fuck_ did this?” the words were a frantic flood, directed at no one. But then her wild, white eyes fixed on Alex. The look in them made him want to turn and bolt. “Alexander, did you know?” her voice cracked horribly, so raw and pained it didn’t even sound like her.

“Ma…ma, I-I’m so sorry…so sorry,” Phillip whispered, his breaths between the words rasping and full of agony.

“My son…” Eliza moaned, turning back him, unable to tear her eyes away even as his features blurred and became indistinct as the tears overflowed in her eyes. She was overwhelmed with the compulsion to memorise every curve and facet of Phillip’s face, just in case this was the last time she’d… No. Her hand found his; she held it to her chest, as if she could physically cling to him to keep his heart beating.

But there was a harsh beeping coming from somewhere. Phillip began to shake. His chest began to rise and fall rapidly and his muscles tightened. There was a strong smell of copper.

“Phillip! Phillip, please, no, focus on me, listen. _Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf_.“

She couldn’t have said where the song came from, she hadn’t sung it to him in years, since he was five years old and she began teaching him French. And yet, her son’s lips moved almost automatically, continuing the melody in his strained, trembling whisper, “ _s-six…sept, h-huit…neuf.”_

Alex felt a shiver go down his spine. Those words flung him right back, to a snowy winter afternoon, to him sitting at the kitchen table with a court file and a cup of hot chocolate in front of him, hearing his wife’s sweet voice drifting towards him from the lounge. He’d followed it, despite how close his deadline was, the sight of his Eliza, with little Phillip resting on her hip, making the most of it before she became too pregnant with their third baby to pick him up, made the lost time worth it. Grinning, he’d crossed to the piano and, on the fly, made up a simple melody to match her song. Little Angie, just two years old, had pulled herself to her feet against the piano stool, babbling happily. The whole family had sung together for hours. Since then, it had always made Alex smile dreamily, when he’d heard Eliza begin all their children’s first French lessons with that little ditty.

Now, here, in this hospital room full of harsh noises and the rusty scents of gunpowder and blood, that song made him want to scream.

“Good,” Eliza said firmly, her knuckles going white around their son’s hand, “Again. _Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, hiut, neuf…”_

_“Un, d-deux, trois, quatre, cinq…six…sept…”_

Phillip’s voice joined his mother’s at first but trailed away to nothing with a shuddering gasp, leaving her’s to finish alone. Alex could feel his pulse in his temples.

“ _Sept, huit, neuf,”_ Eliza repeated insistently, though she’d begun to shake violently.

There was no reply. The harsh beeping alarm continued. It continued. Then it stopped.

“ _Sept, huit…”_ Eliza murmured brokenly, as she and Alex watched their son’s face go slack and his hand go limp.

A silence. A long, awful, hideous, silence. He was…

Eliza screamed in pure anguish as her heart ripped in two, flinging herself across Phillip’s body as the last of his life fled. Her husband would hear that scream in his nightmares until the day he died.

Alex felt himself falling. He groped for Eliza’s hand, finding it, clutching it but she jerked away like his skin was red hot, leaving him frozen and alone as the wave of unimaginable pain broke over him.

She sobbed like she would never stop. He lurched to his feet, tears flowing down his face and began to beat his fists against the wall, not stopping even when the plaster cracked and the bones in his knuckles broke.

They’d thought they’d known what pain was.

 -

Alex couldn’t write, with his hands in the state they were, but that didn’t matter. For once, words couldn’t describe what he was feeling.

His eldest son was dead. Every so often that fact would rise up and strangle him while he was forcing himself to go through the motions of his life. His Phillip. His boy. Every morning his heart shattered all over again.

“But I loved him,” he’d whispered brokenly, without even thinking, as he’d stood by his son’s grave after the funeral. He hadn’t realised Eliza was standing with him, everyone else had trickled away back to the church, he’d thought he was alone; the words had just broken free. But she’d nodded almost imperceptibly and murmured a quiet affirmative, one of only a handful of times she’d freely spoken to him since the Reynolds affair.

“I know,” Eliza had murmured.

Because of course she understood. She was the only other person on the planet who understood what he was going through, who understood how it felt to realise that even their love, as deep and as strong as it had been, had not been enough to keep Phillip safe. She was his only hope of making it through this alive.

And she hated him.

It had been two weeks since…everything. He still woke up at half five every morning, even though he hadn’t set foot in work in days, he made his children breakfast, getting them washed and dressed and ready for school. The younger ones, James and little Lizzie, the ones too young to understand that their family was lying in ruins, were actually quite delighted. It was so rare for their daddy to take them to school _and_ pick them up _and_ watch cartoons with them afterwards, it was like every day was their birthday. But then they’d innocently ask where Phillip was, when he was coming home, was mommy sick, didn’t Phillip know he was missing the new episodes of Adventure Time, and they wouldn’t understand why their father would freeze and begin to silently cry.

He clung to every moment in his children’s’ presence, every light that would shine in their eyes when they saw him. Alexander now knew how precious it was, how fragile it was. And, nowadays, it was the only thing that kept him going, the only thing that turned his mind away from certain…thoughts. He’d be lying if he said there weren’t times, when he lay still fully clothed on the uncomfortable sofa in his office in the early hours of the morning and he didn’t think of the terrible things he’d be willing to do just to hear Phillip call him ‘Pops’ one more time. If it could have brought his son back, he knew with a dark certainty that he wouldn’t hesitate. Maybe that would have made Eliza finally smile.

Eliza barely left her room. Her children would slip in, ask if she needed anything, the younger children would worm their way onto her lap, but it was like talking to a statue. Alexander would linger on the threshold, even now aware that he’d been banned from this room. God, he wanted to say something, do something, comfort her in some way and be comforted in turn. He wanted to fall on his knees and beg her to just turn around and _look at him_ …but he stayed silent. She stayed a living ghost.

What the fuck was he supposed to do?

 -

The Hamilton’s were moving uptown, to where it was calmer, slower, quieter. To where every street corner didn’t have some memory of Phillip associated with it. Even after nearly a month, it was still too much to see the fire hydrant he used to bust open every summer for his younger siblings, to pass the library where he’d read nearly every book in the children’s section and to live in the house that had his marks all over it. It was torture to watch the thousands upon thousands of people sift through New York city, to be reminded that the world was still turning and moving even as theirs rotted from within.

There had been one night where Alexander had just stopped completely, unable to tear his eyes away from those marks on the wall in the hallway, the marks charting the heights of each of their children on every birthday they’d spent in this house, even Phillip, even as he’d grown into a young man he’d still insisted on being included in this family tradition. The sight of those thick marker lines, each with a name and an age printed in Eliza’s careful hand had snapped something in him. It had just got too much.

He’d destroyed everything in his office. He’d bent the spines of books, ripped pages, snapped pens, thrown his various accolades and trophies across the room. He’d worked scientifically, systematically, with a kind of grim, furious logic until the only thing left was the picture of his family, the one he’d had to keep updating almost every two years as he and Eliza kept bringing new Hamilton’s into the world (though this was going to be his last one, he realised sadly). He’d held the frame in his shaking hands, staring at his lost son’s goofy smile through the tears in his eyes, cross-legged on the floor in the epicentre of the destruction when he’d heard a small sound behind him. He’d spun, alarmed, to see Eliza in the doorway, regarding what he’d done with blank, dark eyes. She didn’t look at his face, she still couldn’t mange that, her gaze was fixed on the picture in his grasp. When Alex had said, “We can’t stay here,” in a cold, shaky voice, she’d simply nodded.

So they were moving uptown.

Angelica had found them a place. She’d been coming to see her sister almost every day, trying to keep her going, doing what Alex wished he could. He’d been a little nervous when she’d shown up on their doorstop the morning after it had happened, the last time they’d spoken she’d said something along the lines of breaking every bone in his body for what he’d done to Eliza. But she’d simply looked him straight in the eyes, told him she was so sorry for what had happened, that she was here for their family, to do anything they need her to do. Then she’d breezed past him to the kitchen. Angelica Church, once a big sister, always a big sister. And she’d found them a place uptown where they could mourn in peace. She’d taken care of things, like she always had.

-

Hercules had already driven off in his van with majority of the boxes, it was just the last few that were going in the family’s own car. Alexander was standing on the porch, watching anxiously as Junior tried to manage three boxes on his own. He was about to rush forward and stop him when his namesake shifted his weight and lifted all three with no bother at all. Alex stopped dead. His children were growing up, they all were. He wasn’t ready. How could he protect them all?

Hang on. Where was Angie?

Maybe she was with Eliza. But, no, Eliza was over there, repacking one of the suitcases because clearly Alex hadn’t done it right (there was a twist in his chest as he thought of the witty jibe she would have thrown at him for that one in another lifetime). So where was their daughter?

The house was scarily quiet as he walked through it, so bare and empty. It was hard to admit it to himself, but the thought of leaving this place with all of its poisonous memories, did relieve him a little. Not only were they leaving the horror of Phillip’s death behind, they were leaving behind what Alex had done to his family. Maybe, without constant reminders of his betrayal, Eliza would…maybe he could…

No. He didn’t deserve to be forgiven. He knew that. But, damn it; he was selfish enough to hope. He sighed as he reached Angie’s bedroom door. Another reason to hate himself.

He knocked before he entered, remembering that his daughter was fifteen and wouldn’t want her father barging into her room unannounced, even if it wasn’t her room anymore. “Honey? We’re nearly ready to go,” he called softly.

“Dad?” came his daughter’s lyrical voice, though it sounded flat and wet, like it had sounded ever since she’d fallen to the floor in wracking sobs on the hall carpet, after Alex had done one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do in his entire life and told her that her brother was gone.

When he entered, Angie was sat on her bed. Clearly an attempt at packing had been made but had stalled before it could get very far. It broke his heart to see that expression on his beloved daughter’s face, she looked so…lost. Like nothing around her made sense.

“Don’t worry, love, I’ll give you a hand,” he said, quietly, moving to take the book out of her hand.

“Dad,” Angie said again, her voice so strange and far away, “Dad, when is Phillip coming home? He’s been gone all day.”

Those words stopped her father dead. He blinked, bringing his hand to his throat like he always did when he was scared, “Angie? Sweetheart, what…”

“Phillip’s at school but he should have been home ages ago. He should be home by now. He said he’d help me with my essay. Where is he? Where is he dad, he’s late.”

“Angel,” Alex breathed, using his nickname for her, the one only he used, “Angel, please, don’t do this.”

He could understand the little ones not getting it. But this. This was something different. Something terrifying.

She just continued on in that detached, hollow voice, like she couldn’t stop, “God, I’m going to kill him when he gets here, he said he’d help me with my essay. He’s getting here soon, isn’t he? School finished ages ago. When is he coming home? When’s Phillip coming home? Dad? Dad? Where is he?”

She didn’t even react, barely even noticed, when her father took her in his arms and broke down into tears, crying into her hair as he rocked her.

 

And so Angie went to see a therapist. Her namesake, Angelica, helped set that up too. Alexander and Eliza felt another one of their children slide away from them.

 -

Eliza faintly remembered a time when he husband would tease her gently about how much she slept, about how she’d start to whinge if a party went on later than, say, half eleven, how she’d fall asleep on his shoulder on the subway home. She’d used to smile and him and brag that sleeping was her superpower.

Now she couldn’t remember when her last good night’s sleep was.

The clock on the wall read half past two in the morning, though Eliza hadn’t looked at it once. She was sat in this unfamiliar living room, in this unfamiliar house, on the sofa with her knees pulled up to her chest. She was staring into the fire but she wasn’t seeing it. She was just sitting there, trying desperately to keep from breaking into a million pieces.

There was a sound behind her and she forced herself to turn, thinking it was one of her children, unable to sleep, desperate to comfort them and make up for the way her grief had blinded her to them over the past month.

But it wasn’t James or John or Eliza Jr. It was Alexander.

She blinked and turned back to the fire without a word although there were tears in her eyes now. There was a large part of her that wanted to comfort him too, to hold him and cry into his chest. But there was another part of her that wanted to spit in his face.

She’d been so angry with him, after what he’d done. She’d screamed at him like a harpy, sobbed and cried and spit horrible words at him. She’d wanted to physically hurt him, more than she’d ever wanted to hurt anyone, all the vast love she’d felt for him turning into anger in one wild instant. But her anger had died quickly, burning out like a blackened match, giving way to a bone deep, bitter sadness that she’d been carrying around for close to half a year now. In a weird, crazy way, it made her want to laugh aloud. She’d been such an idiot, thinking that that was real pain. How had she been so blind, caring so much about something as insignificant as her own heart? She realised now how pointless it had all been.

Now she just missed him.

Alex hesitated in the doorway. He and Eliza hadn’t been alone in a room together for such a long time; whenever he’d walked in, she’d promptly left. But now, there she was, looking so scared and small and alone, shaking in the cold night in just a pair of shorts and a tank top. He sighed. He needed to try.

Eliza heard a soft thunk behind her; Alex had set something down on the side table near her, two somethings. She smelled camomile tea; her favourite back when everything she ate and drank hadn’t tasted sour in her mouth. She risked a glance behind her to see what the other thing was.

A small orange pharmacist’s bottle, filled with little blue capsules.

Alex’s voice was shaky, “I asked Angie’s therapist. She recommended these. I think you should take them.”

Eliza didn’t dare look up at him. She didn’t know what she’d do if she did, she just knew she couldn’t bear it.

His plan had been to just set them down and leave, maybe go for one of the long walks he’d found to be somewhat helpful. But he just couldn’t. He felt words rising like bile in his throat, words he knew he had no right to say. He tried to snatch them back but it was too late.

“Eliza please, I can’t do this without you. I’m so sorry, but- God I _need_ you. I know fine fucking well I don’t deserve you, I’m not asking you to forgive me, I’d never ask that but just hear me out. I…I don’t know where this is going, I don’t pretend to understand what we’re facing but…just try for me please, try and…stay.”

Eliza could hear the tears in his voice, the tears that were burning in his already raw eyes. She still didn’t look up.

“Eliza, I know who I married. I know you can get through this; you have to. I just…I’m begging you; let me stay here by your side. That’d…that’d be enough.”

Those words. Her words.

She knew what she was going to do, though she still wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

Eliza turned, getting to her knees. She reached out and pulled him close to her, the first time they’d touched in so, so long and kissed him, silencing his yelp of shock.

He tasted just like she remembered. Her Alex.

After a moment’s hesitation, he kissed her back, his hands setting in their old positions, one on the small of her back, one at her shoulder. When they pulled away, her expression was mirrored on his face, surprise and fear and her own familiar grief. It was like they’d both been staggering blindly through a dark night but they’d found each other. They’d finally found each other in the dark.

 

She pushed him against the wall and kissed him hard and fast and furious, her decision made. Even after so long Alex knew what the kiss meant, what her hand at his jeans meant.

“Eliza,” he breathed, more than a little scared, “Eliza, I don’t think…I mean we can’t…are you sure about this?” His voice cracked helplessly, “After everything I’ve done to you Eliza, I don’t-“

Eliza silenced him. How could she explain this when she didn’t understand half of it herself? All she knew was that she missed him so much she could barely stand it and she wanted to feel something other than this raw, desperate grief.

“Don’t talk Alex. Just do it. Please.”

So he did. He swept her up in his arms, practically carrying her to the bedroom; both of them letting their minds switch off. They made love urgently, insistently, like any moment it was going to be taken away from them. Alex knew Eliza’s body as well now as he’d ever known it, he’d mapped out every curve and hollow and swell with tongue, fingertips and eyes over the course of their marriage. That wasn’t something he was about to forget, even with what had happened. When she came, her legs constricting around his hips, her nails digging into his flesh so hard that they drew beads of blood, her shriek of delight was so sweet and high, he began to cry. Tears of both happiness and grief gently dripped onto Eliza’s bare, flushed chest.

“Alex…” she whispered, her voice heavy, growing increasingly sure she had made a horrible mistake, that’d she’d just hurt both of them even more, “I’m sorry.”

“Eliza, no please. Please, you never, ever need to apologise to me,” he wept, her words like a kick in his guts, “I just…I never thought I’d ever have this again. I don’t…I can’t believe...”

“Yeah. I can’t believe it either,” Eliza sighed gently, not just talking about their lovemaking.

He pulled out of her, his limbs shaking still from his orgasm. He rolled off of her, the two of them lying side by side in the dark sliced open by the cold moonlight, their heavy breathing the only sound.

“Alexander?” Eliza broke the quiet, noting how his name no longer put a bitter taste in her mouth.

He was drying his cheeks with the heels of his hands but he glanced over, his eyes still hesitant like he was expecting her to dissolve in front of his eyes as he jerked awake alone in his cramped new office.

“I forgive you. For everything,” she said simply as she reached over and took his hand, her long fingers snaking through his. And she meant it, she really did.

Drying his eyes had been a waste of time, at those words his face crumpled and his shoulders began to shake as he wept uncontrollably. She felt tears in her own eyes and she clung to him, pressing their bodies together. Once again they’d become each other’s anchors in the middle of the raging hurricane that their lives had turned into.

But they both had a sense that they’d taken a small step towards things being something like okay.

 

A myriad of Romeo and Juliet-esque prayers that the dawn would never come passed through their dozing minds but they were as successful as they had been in the play. A shaft of the strangely washed out light fell across Alexander’s hands wrapped around his coffee mug, highlighting the scars still visible on his knuckles. He’d left Eliza still dreaming but he couldn’t help noticing how tight and sad her face was, even as she slept. As he’d pressed his lips to her head before quietly tiptoeing out, he could help feeling like he’d put that expression there.

His soft sigh echoed oddly around the bare kitchen. It was a strange place to be in when even you couldn’t figure out what you were feeling.

“Good morning.”

Her voice was soft and croaky with sleep. His eyes flickered over to her and his heart caught in his throat as he realised she was wearing those old t-shirt and shorts of his that she’d claimed decades ago, back when they’d first started dating in college. She’d used to wear them as pyjamas all the time until he’d made it so she couldn’t stand the smell of him on her skin. He just assumed she’d thrown them away. But looking at her now, he could almost believe that they _were_ back in college, that he was emerging out of the fog of a caffeine fuelled all nighter to his beautiful girlfriend holding a glass of water in her hand and an expression on her face that plainly told him he was getting into bed whether he wanted to or not. But then he blinked and the lines of sorrow in her face reappeared, the defeated slump in her shoulders. But she was still as beautiful as he remembered.

“Morning. There’s coffee in the pot if you want some, still warm,” he replied, risking a small, hesitant smile. He was well aware that, whatever she’d said last night, he was still on very rotten ice.

But she rewarded him with one of her own as she drifted past him, though she did sit across from, rather than next to him at the table.

“We should…talk about last night?” Alex ventured, cursing his own uncontrollable mouth even as he spoke the words.

“Yeah, I guess,” Eliza, sighed, the mug stopping dead at her lips.

But neither of them could think of what to say next. After about five minutes, Alex began to laugh of all things, the sound strange in their ears but welcome.

She took his hand across the table with a smile. They could find the words later. They had time.

 -

Eliza laid her head against the cool porcelain of the toilet seat, breathing heavily. She thought she was done but then she felt her guts heave and her throat go dry and she vomited again, retching bile into the bowl for the third time in an hour. She felt like she was going to sick up the very lining of her throat but then the nausea passed and she lay on the bathroom floor, tucking her knees up to her chest and groaning softly. She wished Alexander was with her but he was off on one of his long walks. He must have trekked the entire length of New York City a good few times by now but it still wasn’t enough apparently.

She’d started to go with him on these long walks, these random, directionless wanderings he’d been taking since they’d lost their son. Sometimes they went along in silence, her thin arm threaded through his, and sometimes they talked endlessly about any number of things, gradually getting to know each other again. Just yesterday they’d stayed out till dark, her head leaning on his shoulder as they’d sat together for hours on a moonlit bench. It was strange how time passed when your world had slipped from its foundations.

Though Eliza had to admit, though two months ago when it happened she’d never have thought it possible, she was starting to pull herself back together. She had no choice; she had five other children who needed her, her poor daughter especially, not to mention Alex himself.

The medication may have had something to do with it. It helped her sleep if nothing else. And she found she did sleep better when she had her husband’s arms around her, though she was forcing herself to take it slowly where he was concerned. If she was being honest, she really didn’t think he’d hurt her again the way he had, that had been a mistake in the truest sense. But it had still happened.

Her head throbbed, the way it always did when she tried to make sense of what her life had become. The sickening rolling in her stomach that had woken her up was starting to fade but she still didn’t feel right. Though that was nothing new. Her grief had been like poison in her veins for a long time, rendering her weak and sick, making her chest burn and her stomach turn.

So maybe things weren’t getting better? Maybe this was just a brief reprieve; the eye of the storm and the next wave was coming hurtling towards her? Oh God…

“Eliza!? Jesus, are you okay?”

Alexander was in the doorway, dark shadows like bruises under his eyes, his long hair in disarray, windswept. Those had always been part of his features but now they were enough to make her worry. His expression was panicked at the sight of his wife in the foetal position on the bathroom floor. She pulled herself up, her limbs still shaking slightly, as he rushed to help her.

“I’m fine, just…you know,” she sighed as he pulled her to her feet. Alex blinked, his arms wrapping around her protectively. He did know.

He sat on the bed, stifling yawns and hovering concernedly, while she slowly got ready, taking her time lest her stomach try to jump out of her mouth again.

“Um, I didn’t know but…I mean, if you felt up to it…it’s Junior’s piano recital tonight if you wanted to go? With me?” Alex tried. He’d been trying to get Eliza out of the house more and more recently.

Eliza gave a shrug as she pulled her skirt up to her hips, “I’ll try.” She wanted to be there for her son, to make up for everything if she could, but…

She vaguely remembered helping little Alex with his pieces, sitting at the piano with him, smiling as his long fingers, his father’s long fingers, had hesitantly picked their way across the keys, gradually getting more and more confident, finding the way. That had felt so long ago, another lifetime. He’d mentioned it to her again more recently in an attempt to get her attention, to pull her out of her fog. Wait, if that had been only a few weeks ago…

“Alex, what’s the date?” she asked, her voice suddenly flat, emotionless.

He’d seen her face change in the mirror, seen it freeze and fall in the space of a heartbeat. A little alarmed, he replied, “It’s the fifth.”

At first she tried to convince herself she’d heard him wrong. Then that he’d gotten it wrong, that it wasn’t the fifth. She tried so hard to tell herself this wasn’t happening. But with this one realisation, everything else was falling into place.

“Eliza?” Alex’s voice was really scared now and she realised she hadn’t spoken in almost two minutes.

“We might have a problem,” she breathed faintly.

_No. No, this is too cruel, this can’t be happening, it can’t, it’s not_ fair.

“Um…Eliza? Say something. Please?”

“I’m late, Alex. I’m more than a week late,” she choked out.

At first he was confused, it took him a moment to figure out what she was saying. But then he realised and it was like he’d been struck in the chest.

“Oh,” was all he could think to reply.

 

The Hamilton’s old car came to a slightly wheezing halt in the parking lot. Alex killed the engine and took a breath.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” Alex asked, trying to keep his emotions out of his voice, trying to pretend that this was just a completely normal trip to the drugstore, that their entire future wasn’t hanging in limbo.

Eliza didn’t reply for a few moments, just stared out of the front window, her features impassive. Only because Alexander knew her so well did he see the tightness in her frame, the tension in her body that suggested something was wrong.

“I can get it myself,” she replied finally.

Her husband nodded then shifted towards her, reaching over and lifting her jaw with a gentle hand, forcing her to look him in the eyes.

“Eliza, listen to me,” he said, “Whatever this test says, if you are…I mean, if there is…look, you get the choice here. If the test is positive and that’s not what you want, I understand completely. Fuck, if its negative and you’re not happy with that, that’s something we can talk about. Whatever happens, we can fix it.”

She had to keep a strong grip on herself to keep from dissolving into tears. The choice was her’s. But she didn’t want it. She just didn’t _know._

“We can’t just replace him,” she whispered thickly. She watched Alex’s eyes swim as he nodded slowly.

 

The drugstore was busy as Eliza wandered almost dream like through it, mothers doing their shopping after dropping the kids off at school. It had been agonising to have to wait, to hold the question throbbing in their minds but do nothing about it as they waited for their own children to wash and dress and get out of the house. Alex had come close to bursting into tears at the breakfast table when a sleepy little Lizzy had wriggled his way under his father’s newspaper to claim his lap. He’d just buried his face in his youngest’s bed head and kept his breathing as regular as possible, all the while feeling Eliza’s dark eyes on them.

“You’re coming with us?” Junior had asked, a little incredulously. Normally, the older ones walked the little ones to nursery and elementary respectively, given that the schools were all so close together and given that, on any normal day, both parents would be out of the door, to do list a mile long in their minds by seven o’ clock.

But it had actually been nice to walk in the morning sunshine, their family taking up most of sidewalk, watching John and James run ahead, lost in their own little game, pulling William along with them as he’d rolled his eyes and pretended to put up a fight. Little Eliza had fought to follow. Junior had looked a little wistfully after them, clearly half tempted to follow himself, but he’d stayed by Angie’s side, engaging her in some conversation about last nights TV in an attempt to make her smile. Almost unthinkingly, Alex had reached out and took Eliza’s hand, only realising once his fingers had closed around her’s that it might not be a good idea. But she’d squeezed his hand back. A small victory, a small step forward.

 

But now they were here, he realised she’d never felt more far away from him. He slumped down in the drivers seat and wanted to kick himself, curse himself. Their skills at procreation had always been a joke; something the media could raise their eyebrows and make sly innuendos about to spice up the usually dry, figure filled news coming out of the Treasury. Neither Alex nor Eliza had ever taken any notice, they’d both wanted a large family. Some times had been planned, others hadn’t, but each and every time they’d gotten pregnant there’d been nothing but joy. This time, it was just confusion and hurt. Eliza reappeared through the sliding doors with a small white box in her hand. He watched her cross the parking lot, still not looking up to meet his eyes willingly. He sighed.

Why couldn’t he go anywhere near Eliza without hurting her?

 

The drive back was tense and silent, Alex didn’t even try to comfort her or take her; he knew his words would sound hollow. That had been happening a lot since everything. He felt his lower lip tremble and he bit down on it hard to stop it, though he couldn’t quite figure out whether he wanted to laugh or cry. Look what it had taken to make Alexander Hamilton shut up.

The second they’d stepped through the door, Eliza had practically ran up the stairs to their bedroom, not being able to stand it any more. Alex had jogged after her, wondering if this was the kind of crisis where you were supposed to make tea. He perched awkwardly on the bed, at a complete loss for what to do. All he wanted to do was sit with his head in his hands so that was what he did until he heard his wife’s voice call him from behind the door.

When he walked in, Eliza was sat on the floor again, her knees pulled up to her chest, her face waxen.

“What did it say?” Alex asked, his heart pounding so hard he could hear it in his ears.

“Need to wait two minutes,” Eliza murmured, still refusing to look at him, chewing on her thumb the way she always did when she was scared.

Alex slid down beside her, coming to quite an ungainly heap on the floor. She still didn’t look at him. He sighed and pushed his hand through his shoulder length hair, having to hold back the urge to scream. He wanted to grab her shoulders, cry and beg her to just look at him, to talk to him, to tell him what he could do to make her smile like his Eliza, to _be_ his Eliza again-

“What do you want it to say? Honestly?” her voice was soft and so sad it broke his heart.

He knew he couldn’t deny her an answer but what was he supposed to say to that? He took a deep breath and decided to just tear down the walls and see what broke through.

“I wish I had an answer for you, Eliza, I really do. I wish a lot of things. I can’t…I can’t bring myself to regret that night. If that’s selfish, I’m sorry but it’s the truth. Look…” he took a shuddering breath, trying to blink back the tears forming in his eyes, “I guess I can see pros and cons for both outcomes. If the test were negative, that’d be a lot simpler. I understand what you mean about not…not replacing…Ph-Phillip, that’s not what I want, I’d never…oh God…and I mean, I…I…Eliza I love you. I do. I’m sorry. And I will honestly do anything I can to try and make up for what I did, that fact that you can forgive me it…it’s more than I deserve. _You’re_ more than I deserve. And I’m so grateful but I can’t ask you to just take me back and…go back to the way things were. Having another baby…I mean, it might be too much. It might be more than we can handle right now. I just don’t know.”

Eliza nodded, “But if the test is positive, if we decide to do this…then what?”

Alex reached over and took her hand, the answer coming to him without even thinking, “Then this will be one of the happiest days of my life, Eliza.”

She squeezed his had tightly, willing herself not to break. They just held each other until Alex quietly sighed and murmured, “That’s two minutes.”

A shiver ran up Eliza’s spine and she pulled away from him, fear stinging in her throat like she’d taken a breath of biting cold air. She couldn’t move. Now that it had come to it, she’d lost her nerve, “Can you…I can’t,” her voice was barely audible.

Alex scrambled to his feet, more hurt than he wanted to admit to have her recoil from his touch. It brought back memories he didn’t want to have to face anywhere else but in his nightmares. He reached over and picked up the pregnancy test from where it sat on the edge of the sink, reading it quickly, before he could chicken out and freeze up.

He looked. He saw. Eliza watched his back tense; his head drop. When he turned to face her, his eyes were swimming.

“You’re pregnant,” he gasped. There it was.

Eliza looked Alexander straight in the eyes, something she hadn’t been able to do for a long time. She really looked at him, studied his face, that face she’d fallen in love with so long ago, that, if she was truly honest with herself, she’d never stopped loving. No matter what happened, he was Alexander Hamilton, her husband and the father of her children, the man she loved. No matter what else happened, no matter how little sense it made that was always going to be true.

Eliza burst into tears of joy, laughing helplessly even as rivers ran down her face. Alex fell to his knees with a gasp of joy, sobbing just like his wife, pulling her close to him. Their hands met on her stomach, over the place where their newest child was forming. They cried until there was nothing left but tired smiles, their foreheads resting against each other.

Things weren’t ever going to be the same; this was something new. But it could be something good.

 -

It would stand to reason that doing something eight times would make you fairly good at it, that it would get easier each time. But the basic logic of practise makes perfect seemed to not apply to Eliza and childbirth. Not a single one had been what anyone would call easy, not one had lasted less than twenty hours. It was a testament to how much she loved her children that she kept going through with it. Although this time, the difficulty was unsurprising, nothing about this one had been easy.

But it was finally done.

Alex felt that emotion rise up in him, the one he always felt each and every time he became a father to another little Hamilton. He’d been trying for years to find the words for it and only every come close when sat at his piano. As he brought the tiny, squirming form up to his chest, cradling his child against him for the first time, he burst in to tears.

“It’s a boy,” he grinned proudly through his tears, managing to tear his eyes away to look at his exhausted wife, “Oh Eliza…”

She was panting, strands of soaked hair falling across her face but her expression told him that he had his Eliza back. She had come back to him. He loved her so much in that moment, he could hardly breathe.

About forty five minutes of clean up later, Eliza was lying back on the pillows, feeding their youngest son, and feeling happiness inside her that she’d thought she’d lost forever. Alex perched on the foot of the bed, watching with a dreamy expression.

“So…he needs a name. Any ideas?” he asked, reaching out and laying a gentle hand on the downy black hair on his son’s little skull. They never found out the child’s sex in advance, preferring to be surprised but they usually had two names prepared. This time they…they just hadn’t. It would have felt like tempting fate.

Eliza paused. A name had come to her almost instantly and she felt the urge to recoil from it but she steeled herself. It was right.

“You know what we’re going to name him,” she sighed gently, looking up at Alexander.

He blinked, “You sure?”

Eliza nodded smoothly, “I’m sick of saying his name and feeling nothing but grief. I want to remember him but not like that. Like _this_.”

Her husband smiled. The smile was a little sad this time, there was a tinge of grief to it but it was like welcoming back an old friend now. He bent, looking at his newborn son.

“Your brother would love you,” he said quietly.

Both of them could see it in their minds, Phillip’s wonky, brilliant smile, as he greeted his youngest brother, his namesake. They looked at each other, joy and relief on both their faces.

“Welcome home, Little Phillip,” Eliza murmured.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr, quantum-oddity, if you want more soul destroying musicals


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